The flashblindness experiments began at the 1951 Operation Buster-Jangle, the series that included Desert Rock I, with the testing of subjects who "orbit[ed] at an altitude of 15,000 feet in an Air Force C-54 approximately 9 miles from the atomic detonation. . . ." The test subjects were exposed to three detonations during the operation, after which changes in their visual acuity were measured.[67] Although these experiments were conducted at bomb tests that potentially exposed the subjects to ionizing radiation, the purpose of the experiment was to measure the thermal effects of the visible light flash, not the effects of ionizing radiation.

In late 1951, following the first Desert Rock exercise, the government conducted Operation Jangle, a nuclear test series that detonated two nuclear weapons, one on the surface and one buried seventeen feet underground. The two Jangle shots were tests where the weapon's fireball touched the ground. When a nuclear weapon's fireball touches the ground it creates much more local fallout than an explosion that bursts in the air. Consequently, these tests posed some potential hazard to civilians who lived near the test site and to test observers and participants.

Two weeks before Jangle the DOD requested an additional 500 observers at each of the Jangle shots, to acclimate the troops to nuclear weapons. The AEC advised against the additional participants, declaring that "[t]his [the first detonation] was an experiment which had never been performed before and the radiological hazards were unpredictable." In the AEC's view, no one should approach ground zero for three or four days after the surface shot.]

The AEC seems to have been successful in persuading the Department of Defense not to include the extra observers, but the DOD did not agree to the AEC's suggestion on approaching ground zero. Four hours after the first shot, the DOD conducted research involving troops who were accompanied by radiation safety monitors.] Eight teams of men walked over contaminated ground for one hour to determine the effectiveness of protective clothing against nuclear contamination. Similar tests were conducted after the second shot at Jangle, but this time after a longer period. Five days after the shallow underground shot, men crawled over contaminated ground, again to determine the effectiveness of protective clothing. Other men rode armored vehicles through contaminated areas to check the shielding effects of tanks and to check the effectiveness of air-filtering devices.] According to the final report, the protective clothing was "adequate to prevent contact between radioactive dust and the skin of the wearer."

The information on this research is limited. The only mention of the subjects in the report reads, "The volunteer enlisted men, too numerous to mention by name, who participated in the evaluation of protective clothing were of great assistance which is gratefully acknowledged." It is likely that at the time these men were not viewed as subjects of scientific research but rather as men who had volunteered for a hazardous or risky assignment. We know nothing about what these men were told about the risks or whether they felt they could have refused the assignment if they had an interest in doing so.